Asperity he/him Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 Alright so bear with me here and I am not the greatest at picking up on little things. I'll start: >What exactly "healed" Arelon, or was corrupted and then fixed by Raoden's drawing? >How do we know the names Devotion and Dominion? (Are most Shard names revealed during Q&As? Besides the Mistborn Shards, obviously) >Do we know the names of who held the Shards because of The Letter? And I'm assuming that Elantris 2 will probably be the Elantrians vs. Wyrn's Empire. Is Emperor's Soul going to be the second in the three-book Elantris universe? Or just a side-story? I can't think up anything else right now. I've never read Elantris but I decided to finally get around to it because it's a Cosmere book, and now I'll reread TWoK then maybe the Mistborn books just to pick up on everything. P.S. If there is a list of known/discussed/basic Elantris theories, please post them for a simple-minded reader such as myself. (Same goes for the other books but I know this is not the proper sub-forum). Thanks!
Voidus Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 >How do we know the names Devotion and Dominion? (Are most Shard names revealed during Q&As? Besides the Mistborn Shards, obviously) Both of those came from Q&A's but I think we got Honor, Cultivation and Odium from Stormlight directly. I think Endowment was from a Q&A too. >Do we know the names of who held the Shards because of The Letter? Devotion and Dominion, yep. Emperor's soul is seperate to Elantris, different magic, different continent I think. Elantris unfortunately doesn't get as much discussing as the other books because so far it's only 1 book which makes speculation difficult. Hopefully with Emperors soul we'll be discussing it more and don't worry about not knowing a few things, you'll catch on pretty quick and we were all cosmere-newbies at some point I remember finding out about Hoid and being so confused for an hour or so.
Asperity he/him Posted October 3, 2012 Author Posted October 3, 2012 Both of those came from Q&A's but I think we got Honor, Cultivation and Odium from Stormlight directly. I think Endowment was from a Q&A too. Devotion and Dominion, yep. Emperor's soul is seperate to Elantris, different magic, different continent I think. Elantris unfortunately doesn't get as much discussing as the other books because so far it's only 1 book which makes speculation difficult. Hopefully with Emperors soul we'll be discussing it more and don't worry about not knowing a few things, you'll catch on pretty quick and we were all cosmere-newbies at some point I remember finding out about Hoid and being so confused for an hour or so. Do we know when Emperor's Soul takes place compared to Elantris? I just decided to finally get Elantris read since it's a Shardworld book; not sure why I didn't years ago. I read Mistborn then Warbreaker then found out about the Cosmere after Warbreaker. Guess I'll scan through some more of the Elantris sub-forum for theories and such.
Voidus Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 I don't think we know, I'll have a check around to be sure.
name_here Posted October 3, 2012 Posted October 3, 2012 Re: Arlon A major earthquake tore a gaping rift through southern Arlon. This altered the geography of the area and therefore the Aons, which instantly rendered all active Aons nonfunctional. Elantris itself was some sort of power enhancer based on Aon Rao, and it was still capable of attempting to transform AonDor users into Elantrians, but unable to properly complete the process. This locked all the Elantrians into a weird semi-stasis where all their vital functions were suspended. When Raoden added the new line to the Elantris Aon, it returned to proper functionality.
Windrunner he/him Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 There is an answer to the timeline question here. Emperor's Soul occurs a little bit after Elantris but not very long after. I imagine that it probably occurs before Elantris 2 would be set, so that's a ~10 year window.
Senor Feesh Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 Re: Arlon A major earthquake tore a gaping rift through southern Arlon. This altered the geography of the area and therefore the Aons, which instantly rendered all active Aons nonfunctional. Elantris itself was some sort of power enhancer based on Aon Rao, and it was still capable of attempting to transform AonDor users into Elantrians, but unable to properly complete the process. This locked all the Elantrians into a weird semi-stasis where all their vital functions were suspended. When Raoden added the new line to the Elantris Aon, it returned to proper functionality. There is some speculation (unconfirmed AFAIK) that the earthquake which caused the chasm (which in turn knocked out all the Aons) may have been caused by Odium shattering Devotion and Dominion and killing Aona and Skai (the original Shardholders, whose names we did indeed learn in the Letter). As name_here mentioned, because AonDor was so closely tied to the landscape of Arelon (remember that the first lines of each Aon are the coast, mountains and the dot to represent the lake), the chasm was such a fundamental change to the land that it needed to be reflected in the Aons to make them function again (hence the addition of Raoden's Chasm Line).
Windrunner he/him Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 I really doubt Odium was behind the Chasm. He visited Sel, hundreds (if not thousands) of years before the Reod. Sure, you can make the argument that he set in motion the events that led to the earthquake, but I think that if he wanted to destroy AonDor, he could have just caused the Chasm. Vin could turn a world in an instant, I bet Odium could put one measly crack in the ground if he so chose, especially if he waited until after Devotion and Dominion were Splintered. Now, I do think that it's possible that he was behind the extinction of the original Elantrians though, for when the Aonic peoples migrated to Arelon they discovered Elantris abandoned there. Brandon has made references to people building Elantris before, so obviously something happened to those people, and I think Odium might have had something to do with it. (And who knows, maybe Dakhor was known before too and he killed them off as well)
Senor Feesh Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 Vin could turn a world in an instant, True, but only so long as Ati (Ruin) wasn't directly opposing her, because in turning the world she was hastening Ruin's cause. As soon as she tried to act in ways counter to Ruin's desires, he moved to block her. I can imagine a similar clash between Aona and Rayse. I'm not necessarily espousing this theory (especially if the time discrepancy is so large as you've said), just that it's a theory with some plausibility. Now, I do think that it's possible that he was behind the extinction of the original Elantrians though, for when the Aonic peoples migrated to Arelon they discovered Elantris abandoned there. This, I'd missed or forgotten. I like where your thoughts on this, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter Sorry, weird reference. Anyway, I do like this idea. What evidence do we have for/against? If that's too much of a thread-jack, let's start over somewhere else.
name_here Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 Aona and Skai died long before Elantris was set. It is highly unlikely anything could have prevented Odium from trashing the planet after Splintering their Shards.
Windrunner he/him Posted October 5, 2012 Posted October 5, 2012 Yep, that's what I was getting at. I don't think Splintered Shards would offer any significant resistance to whatever a full Shard was trying to do. And the information about when Aona and Skai died comes in sort of two parts. This is the relevant quote. MI'CHELLEI know that you've answered this before, but we don't have citation yet. Was the earthquake caused by Odium's visit to Elantris? You've answered that one before, I believe. BRANDON SANDERSON I don’t know if I have. I think I’ve given implications without a strict, direct answer on that one. MI'CHELLE And what are the implications, so I can know if I'm thinking of the right answer? BRANDON SANDERSON What do you think I've said? MI'CHELLE I think you've said, no it isn't. BRANDON SANDERSON The Seons existed before the earthquake. MI'CHELLE But was the earthquake caused by Odium? BRANDON SANDERSON When Odium visited there were no Seons. JOSH Okay. MI'CHELLE But that doesn't answer the question about the earthquake, so that's interesting to note. BRANDON SANDERSON See what I'm saying? Source Seons don't seem like a recent development, so this seems like a long time ago, at least a couple centuries in my opinion. He hints that Odium could have done it, and maybe I'm totally wrong and Odium is absolutely behind this. There's only one potential rationale I can see here. We know that any person can take up a Shard. It does seem likely to me though, that being a magic user could be helpful in doing so. So if Odium created the conditions for the earthquake way back when, as a sort of insurance to destroy any future users of Devotion's magic. I still don't love the idea, because I think it probably would have worked equally well for him to have just made the chasm then, or even better yet, totally rearranged the whole continent. However, we don't have all the information by far, so I won't discount Odium being behind the Chasm entirely.
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